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NARRATIVE OF PRISON LIFE 



AT BALTIMORE AND JOHNSON'S 
ISLAND. OHIO 



BY 



HENRY E. SHEPHERD. M. A., LL. D. 

Formerly Superintendent of Public Instruction, Baltimore. 

Author of " Tlie Life of Robert E. Lee," " History of 

the English Language," " Commentary upon 

Temiyson's ' In Memoriam,' " etc. 



1917 

Commercial Ptg. & Sta. Co. 
Baltimore 






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77 



NARRATIVE OF PRISON LIFE 



J WAS captured at Gettysburg on the 
fifth day of July, 1863. A bullet had 
passed through my right knee during 
the fierce engagement on Gulp's Hill, 
July 3rd, and I fell into the hands of the Fed- 
eral Army. 

By the 6th of July Lee had withdrawn from 
Pennsylvania, and, despite the serious nature 
of my wound, I was removed to the general 
hospital, Frederick City, Aid. Here for, at 
least a month, I was under the charge of the 
regular army surgeons, at whose hands I re- 
ceived excellent and skillful treatment. For 
this I have ever been grateful. I recall, also, 
many kindnesses shown me by a number of 
Gatholic Sisters of Frederick, whose special 
duty was the care of the sick and the wounded. 
On the 14th of August I was taken to Bal- 
timore. Upon arriving, I was forced to march 
with a number of fellow prisoners from Camden 
Station to the ofiice of the Provost Marshal, 
then situated at the Gilmor House, directly 
facing the Battle Monument. The weather 
was intensely hot, and my limb was bleeding 



from the still unhealed wound. After an ex- 
hausting delay, I was finally removed in an 
ambulance to the "West Hospital" at the end 
of Concord street, looking out upon Union 
Dock and the wharves at that time occupied by 
the Old Bay Line or Baltimore Steam Packet 
Company. 

The West Building was originally a ware- 
house intended for the storage of cotton, now 
transformed into a hospital by the Federal gov- 
ernment. It had not a single element of adap- 
tation for the purpose to which it was applied. 

The immense structure was dark, gloomy, 
without adequate ventilation, devoid of sani- 
tary of hygienic appliances or conveniences, and 
pervaded at all times by the pestilential exhala- 
tions which arose from the neighboring docks. 
During the seven weeks of my sojourn here, I 
rarely tasted a glass of cold water, ibut drank, 
in the broiling heat of the dog days, the warm, 
impure draught that flowed from the hydrant 
adjoining the ward in which I lay. My food 
was mush and molasses with hard bread, served 
three times a day. 

When I reached the West Building, I was 
almost destitute of clothing, for such as I had 
worn was nearly reduced to fragments, the sur- 
geons having multilated it seriously while 
treating my wound received at Gettysburg. 
6 



My friends made every effort to furnish me 
with a fresh supply but without avail. The 
articles of wearing apparel designed for me 
were appropriated by the authorities in charge, 
and the letter which accompanied them was 
taken unread from my hands. Moreover, my 
friends and relatives, of whom I had not a few in 
Baltimore, were rigorously denied all access to 
me ; if they endeavored to communicate with 
me, their letters were intercepted ; and if they 
strove to minister to my relief in any form, their 
supplies were turned back at the gate of the 
hospital, or confiscated to the use of the ward- 
ens and nurses. 

On one occasion a party of Baltimore ladies 
who were anxious to contribute to the well 
being of the Confederate prisoners in the West 
Building, were driven from the sidewalk by a 
volley of decayed eggs hurled at them by the 
hospital guards. I was present when this in- 
cident occurred, and hearing the uproar, limped 
from my bunk to the window, just in time to 
see the group of ladies assailed by the eggs 
retreating up Concord street in order to escape 
these missiles. They were soon out of range, 
and their visit to the hospital was never re- 
peated, at least during my sojourn within its 
walls. 

I remained in West Hospital until Septem- 
7 



ber 29th, 1863, at which date I was transferred 
to Johnson's Island, Ohio, our ronte being by 
the Northern Central Railway from Calvert 
Station through Pittsburg to Sandusky, Ohio. 
Our party consisted of about thirty-five Con- 
federate officers, one of the number being Gen- 
eral Isaac R. Trimble, the foremost soldier of 
Maryland in the Confederate service, who was 
in a state of almost absolute helplessness, a 
limb having been amputated above the knee 
in consequence of a wound received at Gettys- 
burg on the 2nd of July. 

A word in reference to the methods of 
treatment, medical and surgical, which pre- 
vailed in West Hospital, may serve to illustrate 
the immense advance in those spheres of sci- 
ence, since the period I have in contemplation — 
1863-64. Lister had only recentlv promulgated 
his beneficent and far reaching discovery, 
aseptics; and even the use of anaesthetics, which 
had been known to the world for nearly fifteen 
years, was awkward, crude and imperfect. The 
surgeons of that time seemed to be timorous in 
the application of their own agency, and the carni- 
val of horrors which was revealed on more than 
one occasion in the operating room, might have 
engaged the loftiest power of tragic portrayal 
displayed by the author of "The Inferno." The 
gangrene was cut from my wound, as a butcher 



would cut a chop or a steak in the Lexington mar- 
ket ; it may have been providential that I was 
dehvered from' the anaesthetic blundering then 
in vogue, and "recovered in spite of my physi- 
cian." Consideration originating in sensibility, or 
even in humanity, found no place in West Hospi- 
tal. To illustrate concretely, a soldier, severely 
wounded, was brought into the overcrowded ward 
in which I lay. There was no bunk or resting 
place at his disposal, but one of the stewards 
recognizing the exigency, soon found a ghastly 
remedy. "Why," he said, pointing to a dying 
man in his cot, "that old fellow over there will 
soon be dead, and as soon as he is gone, we'll put 
this man in his bed." And so the living soldier 
was at once consigned to the uncleansed berth 
of his predecessor. Five years after the war had 
passed into history, I met the physician who had 
attended me, on a street car in South Baltimore. 
He did not recognize me, as I had been trans- 
formed from boyhood to manhood, since I en- 
dured my seven weeks' torture from thirst and 
hunger in the cavernous recesses of West Hos- 
pital. Among the notable characters who visited 
the sick and wounded, was Thomas Swann, asso- 
ciated in more than one relation with the political 
fortunes of Maryland. The object of his mission 
was to prevail upon his nephew, then in the Con- 
federate service, to forswear himself and become 
9 



a recreant to the cause of the South. His purpose 
was accomplished without apparent difficulty, or 
delay in assuring the contemplated result. Rev. 
Dr. Backus, pastor of the First Presbyterian 
Church, was another visitor whom I recall. Not 
one of those who would gladly have ministered 
to my needs, was ever allowed to cross the thres- 
hold, or in any form to communicate with me. 

The first of October, 1863, found me estab- 
lished in Block No. 11, at Johnson's Island, Ohio. 
This, one of the most celebrated of the Federal 
prisons, is situated about three miles from San- 
dusky, near the mouth of its harbor, not remote 
from the point at which Commodore Perry won 
his famous victory during the second war with 
England, September 10th, 1813. On every side, 
Lake Erie and the harbor encompassed it effect- 
ually. Nature had made it an ideal prison. There 
was but a single hope of escape, and that was by 
means of the dense ice which enveloped the island 
during the greater part of the winter season. I 
once saw 1,500 Federal soldiers march in perfect 
security from Sandusky to Johnson's Island, a 
distance of three miles, across the firmly frozen 
harbor. This was in January, 1864. The area 
of the island was estimated at eight acres; it is 
now devoted to the peaceful purpose of grape 
culture. 

During the summer months, when the lake 

10 



was free from ice, a sloop of war lay constantly 
off the Island, with her guns trained upon the 
barracks. Yet, notwithstanding the seemingly 
hopeless nature of the surroundings, there were 
a few successful attempts to escape. I knew per- 
sonally at least two of those who scaled the high 
wall and made their way across the frozen har- 
bor under cover of the friendly darkness. One 
of these, Colonel Winston, of Daniel's N. C. 
Brigade, during the fearful cold January, 1864, 
covered his hands with pepper, and wearing a 
pair of thick gloves, sprang over the wall, escaped 
to Canada, and reached the Confederacy via 
Nassau and Wilmington, N. C, running the block- 
ade at the latter point. Another was Mr. S. 
Cremmin, of Louisiana, for many years principal 
of a male grammar school in Baltimore, who 
died as recently as 1908. Mr. Cremmin reached 
the South through Kentucky, cleverly represent- 
ing himself as an ardent Union sympathizer. 
Those who failed, as by far the greater number 
did (for I can recall not more than three or four 
successful attempts in all), were subjected to 
the most degrading punishments in the form of 
servile labor, scarcely adapted to the status of 
convicts. 

This island prison was intended for the 
confinement of Confederate officers only, of whom 
there were nearly three thousand immured with- 
11 



in its walls during the period of my residence. 
The greater part of these had been captured at 
Gettysburg and Port Hudson, just at the date 
of the suspension of the cartel of exchanges of 
prisoners on the part of the Federal government, 
July, 1863. 

As it is the aim of this narrative to present 
a simple statement of personal experiences, not 
impressions or inferences deduced from the nar- 
rative of others, every incident or episode de- 
scribed is founded upon the individual or im- 
mediate knowledge of the writer. I relate what I 
saw and heard, not what I received upon testi- 
mony, however accurate or trustworthy. My rec- 
ord of the period that I passed at Johnson's Island 
will be devoted to the consideration of several es- 
sential points, each of them being illustrated by 
one or more specific examples. To state them in 
the simplest form, they are : The rations served to 
the Confederate prisoners; measures used to pro- 
tect them from the extreme rigor of the climate 
as to fuel and clothing ; their communication with 
their friends in the South, by means of the mails 
conveyed through the medium of the flag of truce 
boats, via Richmond and Aiken's Landing; and 
the treatment accorded them in sickness by the 
physicians in charge of the hospital. These, I 
believe, include the vital features involved in a 
narrative of my experiences as a prisoner in Fed- 

12 



era! hands. 

During the earHer months of my hfe on the 
Island, a sutler's shop afforded extra supplies for 
those who were fortunate enough to have control 
of small amounts of United States currency. 
This happier element, however, included but a 
limited proportion of the three thousand, so that, 
for the greater part, relentless and gnawing hun- 
ger was the chronic and normal state. But even 
this merciful tempering of the wind to the shorn 
lambs of implacable appetite, was destined soon 
to become a mere memory ; for suddenly and 
without warning, the sutler and his mitigating 
supplies passed away upon the ground of retalia- 
tion for alleged cruelties inflicted upon Federal 
prisoners in the hands of the Confederate gov- 
ernment. Then began the grim and remorseless 
struggle with starvation until I was released on 
parole and sent South by way of Old Point dur- 
ing the final stages of the siege of the Confederate 
capital. 

With the disappearance of the sutler's stores 
and the exclusion of every form of food provided 
by friends in the North or at the South, there 
came the period of supreme suffering by all alike. 
Boxes sent prisoners were seized, and their con- 
tents appropriated. Thus began, and for six 
months continued, a fierce and unresting conflict 
to maintain life upon the minimum of rations fur- 
13 



nishcd from day to day by the Federal commis- 
sariat. To subsist upon this or to die of gradual 
starvation, was the inevitable alternative. To 
illustrate the extreme lengths to which the ex- 
clusion of supplies other than the official rations 
was carried, an uncle of mine in North Carolina, 
who represented the highest type of the ante- 
bellum v'^outhern planter, forwarded to me, by 
flag of truce, a box of his finest hams, renowned 
through all the land for their sweetness and ex- 
cellence of flavor. The contents, were appropri- 
ated by the commandant of the Island, and the 
empty box carefully delivered to me at my quart- 
ers. The rations upon which life was maintained 
for the latter months of my imprisonment were 
distributed every day at noon, and were as fol- 
lows : To each prisoner one-half loaf of hard 
bread, and a piece of salt pork, in size not suffi- 
cient for an ordinary meal. In taste the latter 
was almost nauseating, but it was devoured be- 
cause there was no choice other than to eat it, 
or endure the tortures of prolonged starvation. 
Stimulants such as tea and cofifee were rigidly 
interdicted. For months I did not taste either, 
not even on the memorable first of January, 1864, 
when the thermometer fell to 22 degrees below 
zero, and my feet were frozen. 

Vegetable food was almost unknown, and 
as a natural result, death from such diseases as 
14 



scurvy, carried more than one Confederate to a 
^rave in the island cemetery just outside the 
prison walls. I never shall forget the sense of 
gratitude with which I secured, by some lucky 
chance, a raw turnip, and in an advanced stage 
of physical exhaustion, eagerly devoured it, as 
I supported myself by holding on to the steps of 
my barrack. No language of which I am capable 
is adequate to portray the agonies of immitigable 
hunger. The rations which were distributed at 
noon each day, were expected to sustain life un- 
till the noon of the day following. During this 
interval, many of us became so crazed by hunger 
that the prescribed allowance of pork and bread 
was devoured ravenously as soon as received. 
Then followed an unbroken fast until the noon 
of the day succeeding. For six or seven months I 
subsisted upon one meal in 24 hours, and that was 
composed of food so coarse and unpalatable as 
to appeal onlv to a stomach which was eating out 
its own life. So terrible at times were the pangs 
of appetite, that some of the prisoners who were 
fortunate enough to secure the kindlv services of 
a rat-terrier, were glad to appropriate the animals 
which were thus captured, cooking and eating 
them to allay the fierce agony of unabating hun- 
ger. Although I frequently saw the rats pur- 
sued and caught, I never tasted their flesh when 
cooked, for I was so painfully affected by nausea, 

15 



as to be rendered incapable of retaining the or- 
dinary prison fare. 

I had become so weakened by months of 
torture from starvation that when I slept I 
dreamed of luxurious banquets, while the saliva 
poured from my lips in a continuous flow, until 
my soldier shirt was saturated with the copious 
discharge. 

The winters in the latitude of Johnson's Is- 
land were doubly severe to men born and raised 
in the Southern States. IMoreover, the prisoners 
possessed neither clothing nor blankets intended 
for such weather as we experienced. During the 
winter of 1863-64, I was confined in one room 
with seventy other Confederates. The building 
was not ceiled, but simply weather-boarded. It 
afTorded most inadequate protection against the 
cold or snovv, which at times beat in upon my 
bunk with pitiless severity. The room was pro- 
vided with one antiquated stove to preserve 70 
men from intense suffering when the thermometer 
stood at fifteen and twenty degrees below zero. 
The fuel given us was frequently insufficient, and 
in our desperation, we burned every available 
chair or box, and even parts of our bunks found 
their way into the stove. During this time of 
horrors, some of us maintained life by forming a 
circle and dancing with the energy of dispair. 
The sick and wounded in the prison hospital 

16 



had no especial provision made for their comfort. 
They received the prescribed rations, and were 
cared for in their helplessness, as in their dying 
hours, by other prisoners detailed as nurses. To 
this duty I v^as once assigned and ministered to 
my comrades as faithfully as I was able from 
the standpoint of youth and lack of training. 

The mails from the South were received 
only at long and agonizing intervals. I did not 
hear a word from my home until at least four 
months after my capture. The official regulations 
prescribed 28 lines as the extreme limit allowed 
for a letter forwarded to prisoners of war. When 
some loving and devoted wife or mother exceeded 
this limit, the letter was retained by the command- 
ant, and the empty envelope, marked "from your 
wife," "your mother," or "your child," was placed 
in the hands of the prisoner. During my confine- 
ment at Johnson's Island, I succeeded in com- 
municating with ex-President Pierce, whom my 
uncle, James C. Dobbin, of North Carolina, had 
prominently supported in the political convention 
which nominated Mr. Pierce at Baltimore in 1852. 
Knowing this fact, and that my uncle had been 
closely associated with Mr. Pierce as Secretary of 
the Navy, I addressed a letter to the former Presi- 
dent, in the hope that he might exert some salu- 
tary influence which would induce the authorities 
to ameliorate our unhappy condition. 

17 



I received a most kind and cordial letter from 
Mr. Pierce, who declared "You could not enter- 
tain a more mistaken opinion than to suppose that 
I have the slightest power for good with this gov- 
ernment." 

Among the Confederate officers who were 
imprisoned at Johnson's Island at ditTerent times 
and during varying periods, were a number who 
in latter years won fame and fortune in their 
respective spheres, material or intellectual, pro- 
fessional or commercial. Many of these I knew 
personally, and I insert at this point the names of 
some with whom I came into immediate relation. 
In this goodly company I recall General Archer, 
of Maryland ; General Edward Johnson, of Vir- 
ginia; General Jeff. Thompson, of the Western 
Army ; Col. Thomas S. Kenan, of North Carolina ; 
General Isaac R. Trimble, of Maryland ; Col. 
Robert Bingham, the head of the famous Bing- 
ham School of North Carolina ; General James 
R. Herbert, of Baltimore ; Col. Henry Kyd Doug- 
las, of Jackson's staff; Col. K. M. Murchison, of 
North Carolina; Col. J. Wharton Green, owner 
of the famous Tokay Vineyard, near Fayette- 
ville. North Carolina; William Morton Brown, of 
Virginia, Rockbridge Artillery; Captain B. R. 
Smith, of North Carolina; Captain Joseph J. 
Davis, of North Carolina; Lieutenant Adolphus 
Cook, of Maryland; Lieutenant Houston, of 
18 



Pickett's Division ; Captain Ravenel Macbeth, of 
South CaroHna; Captain Matt. Manly of North 
Carolina ; Lieut. Bartlett Spann, Alabama ; Lieut. 
D. U. Barziza, of Texas; (Lieutenant Barziza 
was named "Decimus et Ultimus," as the "tenth 
and last" of the Barziza children) ; Lieutenant 
McKnew, of Maryland ; Lieutenant Crown, of 
]\Iaryland; Lieut. A. McFadgen, of North Caro- 
lina; Lieutenant McNulty, of Baltimore; Lieu- 
tenants James Metz, Moore, George Whiting. 
Nat. Smith, of North Carolina; Major Mayo, 
Captain Hicks, Captain J. G. Kenan, of North 
Carolina; Captain Peeler, of Florida; Colonel 
Scales, of Mississippi ; Colonel Rankin, Colonel 
Goodwin, Lieutenant-Colonel Ellis, Lieutenant- 
Colonel "Ham" Jones, all of North Carolina; 
Captain J. W. Grabill, of Virginia ; Captain Fos- 
ter, of Mosby's Command ; Dr. Fabius Haywood 
and Lieutenant Bond, from North Carolina ; Col- 
onel Lock and Colonel Steadman, of Alabama; 
Captain Foster, Captain Gillam, Adjutant Pow- 
ell, of North Carolina; Lieutenants King and 
Jackson, of Georgia. 

Many of these whom I have named, are still 
living, and this list may be indefinitely extended. 
They will attest the essential accuracy of every 
statement that this narrative contains. 

A monument designed by Sir Moses Eze- 
kiel, himself a Confederate veteran, and a former 

19 



cadet at the school of Stonewall Jackson, was 
dedicated in 1908 to the memory of the Confed- 
erate officers whose tinal resting place is near this 
island prison by Lake Erie. 

I regret that a rational regard for the con- 
ditions of space renders impracticable a more 
elaborate narrative of my life as a captive on the 
narrow island which lies at the mouth of the Bay 
of Sandusky. A mere enumeration of those with 
Vv^hom I was brought into contact, representing 
every Southern State from Maryland to Texas, 
the Ogdens, Bonds, Kings, Manlys, Jacksons, 
Lewises, Mitchells, Jenkines, Aliens, Winsors, 
Crawfords, Bledsoes, Beltons, Fites, in addition 
to those already named, forms a mighty cloud of 
witnesses, a line stretching out almost to "the 
crack of doom." A melancholy irony of fate 
marked a large element of the very limited com- 
pany who escaped by their own daring, who were 
so fortunate as to secure release by exchange, or 
by the influence or intercession of friends in 
accord with the Federal government. I recall 
among these. Colonel Boyd, Colonel Godwin, 
Captain George Byran, who fell in the forefront 
of the fray, charging a battery near Richmond 
(1864), dying only a few moments ere it passed 
into our hands ; and Colonel Brable who, at Spott- 
sylvania, refused to surrender, and accepted death 
as an alternative to be preferred to a renewal of 

20 



the tortures involved in captivity. While life on 
the island implied gradual starvation of the body 
as an inevitable result of the methods which pre- 
vailed, I found food for the intellect in devotion 
to the books which had been supplied to me by 
loving and gracious friends whose home was in 
Delaware. There was no lack of cultured gentle- 
men in our community, and in their goodly fellow- 
ship I applied my decaying energies to the Latin 
classics, Blackstone's Commentaries, Macaulay's 
Essays; and found my recreation in Victor Hugo, 
whose "Les Miserables" had all the charm of 
novelty, having recently issued from the press. 
The poet-laureate of the prison was Major Mc- 
Knight, whose pseudonym, "Asa Hartz," had be- 
come a household word, not with comrades alone, 
but in all the States embraced within the Confed- 
eracy. I reproduce "My Love and I," written 
upon the island, and in my judgment, his happiest 
venture into the charmed sphere of the Muses. 

MY LOVE AND L 
L "My Love reposes on a rosewood frame 
(A 'bunk' have I). 
A couch of feathery down fills up the same 
(Mine's straw, cut dry). 

2. "My Love her dinner takes in state, 
And so do I, 
The richest viands flank her plate, - 

Coarse grub have L 
Pure wines she sips at ease her thirst to 
21 



slake, 
I pump my drink from Erie's limpid lake. 

3. "My Love has all the world at will to roam, 

Three acres I. 
She goes abroad or quiet sits at home, 

So cannot I. 
Bright angels watch around her couch at 

night, 
A Yank, with loaded gun keeps me in sight. 

4. "A thousand weary miles now stretch be- 

tween 

My Love and I — 
To her this wintry night, cold, calm, serene, 

I waft a sigh — 
And hope, with all my earnestness of soul, 
Tomorrow's mail may bring me my parole. 

5. "There's hope ahead: We'll one day meet 

again, 
My Love and I — 
We'll wipe away all tears of sorrow then ; 

Her love-lit eye 
Will all my troubles then beguile, 
And keep this wayward Reh from 'John- 
son's Isle.' " 

So a gleam from the ideal world of poesy 
fell upon the gloom of the prison which Mr. 
Davis, in his message to the Confederate Con- 
gress, December, 1863, described as "that chief 
den of horrors, Johnson's Island." 

END. 

22 



